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Invited speaker presentation

Metagenomic studies have allowed an unprecedented view of the microbial communities
that inhabit our world and our bodies. Deep sequencing data have already been generated
from several environments, as well as from various human body sites. As more data
are generated, we are beginning to understand the structure of our commensal microbial
communities and how microbes affect our health. Analyzing the metagenomic data, however,
poses significant computational challenges, because few software tools are available
that can handle the volume and characteristics of the data being generated. In my
talk, I will primarily focus on the challenges posed by metagenomic assembly and will
outline recent research in my laboratory aimed at meeting these challenges. I will
also describe some of the analyses that can be performed on the assembled data but
would not be possible in read-based analyses.